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UNTTEE STATES PATENT OFFICE.

RICHARD BROWN, ROBERT WILLIAM BARNES, AND JOSEPH BELL, OF LIV- ERPOOL, COUNTY OF LANCASTER, ENGLAND.

METHOD OF PREPARING PICTURES AND PHOTOGRAPHS FOR PHOTO-ENGRAl/ING.

SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 311,057, dated January 20, 1885.

Application filed August 1, 1883.

(Specimens Patented in England March 15, 1883, No. 1,380, and in France April .21, 1883,

To aZZ whom it may concern Be it known that we, RICHARD BROWN and ROBERT WILLIAM BARNES and Josnrn BELL, all subjects of the Queen of Great Britain,

and all of the city of Liverpool, in the county of Lancaster, in that part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland called England, have jointly invented certain new and useful improvements in and relating to the IO preparation of pictures and photographs, to be used in the production of pictures by the art of photography and photo-engraving, and in the production of gelatine reliefs and printing-surfaces, (for which we have jointly obtained Letters Patent for Great Britain, No. 1,380, bearing date the 15th day of March, A. D. 1883, and in France bearing date the 21st day of April, A. D. 1883, No. 155,029,) and we do jointly hereby declare that the following is a description of our joint invention in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any one skilled in the arts to which itappertains or is most nearly con nected to put into practice and use the same. 25 Our invention relates to certain improvements, hereinafter more particularly mentioned, in the preparation of pictures and photographs to be used in the production of pictures by the art of photography and photoengraving, and in the production of gelatine reliefs and printing-surfaces.

Previous to our invention in the art of photo-engraving or photo-litliography, amongst other methods, it has been the practice to pro- 5 duce metal-type surfaces or other surfaces such as plaster-of-paris and like surfacesfrom gelatine reliefs, and then to grain the surface of the metal or plaster impression. The surface on the metal type has been also 0 produced by the'processes known as zincography, photo-etching, photo type, photo-lithography, and the like, which processes have hitherto been chiefly confined to reproducing from what are technically known as pointpictures.

Our invention consists in preparing and producing pictures, photographs, and type by the following methods: NVe take the picture, which may be any half-tone picture or photograph, and we give it a stippled or grained or lined surface, which is effected by hatching, roughening, or breaking up the surface, or any portion of the surface, by pressure from a sheet of wire-gauze, or a sheet of perforated metal, or a grained or lined gelatine relief. This 5 5 operation is performed by passing the picture or photograph, together with the wire-gauze or like material, through press-rolls, the pressure of which indents the wire-gauze into the picture or photograph, and leaves an indented impression or grain over the picture or photograph. After imparting the grain to the picture by indenting into it the wire-gauze or the like, having so produced the stippled or lined surface on the picture, it is, if necessary or desirable, submitted to artistic manipulation, whereby it is perfected into condition for use in many of the processes at present known. The picture so prepared can be used for producing printing-surfaces by such processes as woodburytype, zincography, photo-etching, photo-engraving, photo-lithography, and the like onstone, metal, or other surface, which processes h ve hitherto been chiefly confined to reproducing from what are technically known as point-pictures, whereas, by our process, printing-surfaces can be produced from natural objects, animate and inanimate. For example, having obtained a negative or a positive photograph from the picture, prepared as above described, we produce a gelatine relief in the manner well known in the art of photography. This gelatine relief will have a grained surface over the picture and background, and when applied in the production of metal-type printing surfaces, as by the \Voodbury process, the metal-type printingsurface resulting from the above-described operations has a grained or lined surface, such as is suitable for printing from the ordinary 9o printers ink.

-We are aware that it is not new to roughen or stipple the surface of photographs so that dry or liquid colors may be applied thereto with greater facility, and we are also aware 5 that printing-type plates having grained surfaces have been produced by. graining said plates, either before or after the photograph has been transferred thereto, or by roughening in various ways the gelatine relief from which the said plates are formed; but this is not What we do.

Our invention consists in and we c1ai1n The process hereinbefore described of producing printing-type plates having lined or stippled surfaces, which process consists of mechanically roughening-the surface of the phov tograph itself, of then taking a negative or a positive of said roughened photograph on snitable material, and of then making therefrom a printing-type surface by any Well-known process, substantially as set forth.

RICHARD BROWN. ROBERT XVILLIAM BARNES. JOSEPH BELL.

\Vitnesses:

FREDERICK J OHN CHEESBROUGH, JOHN HAMILTON REDMQND,

Both of 15 llater Street, Liverpool, England. 

